Skip to main content

Re-reading THE DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS

30 years ago I wandered into a Walden Books. It was in the Janesville Mall, in (not surprisingly) Janesville Wisconsin. I bought two books or rather my Dad bought me two books. It is a strange occurrence because my parents didn't buy books. My Dad was and still, is an occasional reader. Historical novels about Colonial America and Native Americans... "I read a couple pages and I fall asleep..." My mom read a lot in fact, but she got them from the library until e-readers came around. 

As a child, I liked books as long as they were about baseball and World Records. My sister and I would get what amounted to YA fiction from the library. Encyclopedia Brown was huge even if I thought he was an insufferable dick. Memorably my sister and I read THE ADVENTURES OF THE BLACK HAND GANG. We liked the book because at the end of each chapter there was a picture where you had to spot the 'anomaly'. It was fun. Later in life, as I met and married my wife I discovered that I had in fact read next to nothing as a child. SNOWY DAY. Maybe in school. The caterpillar book. Nope. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE? No, and honestly that kid is also insufferable. THE MONSTER AT THE END OF THIS BOOK was the only book I remember reading as a child.

So Walden Books. In the past, I would go in there quite frequently just to browse. This time my Dad said he would buy me a book and I grabbed Clive Cussler's DRAGON because the cover was very attractive. Perplexingly my Dad let me pick out another. In retrospect, I think he let me do that because he didn't know how much books costs. Paperbacks were $6-7 and likely assumed hardcovers may have cost a few bucks more. Anyway, $40 later and I have a lifelong hobby. I don't know why he didn't make me put one of them back. Not to pat myself too much on the back, but I rarely asked for stuff when I was a kid. My family wasn't poor, but it was clear there was not a lot of extra to go around. I think it helped that I was the last of the 'play outside' generation and didn't need it. [Editor's Note: Play outside? You were 17 years old at this point. You had a driver's license. You weren't an orphan.]

I struggle with this memory because I also have an equally foggy memory of getting DRAGON at another Walden Books in Rockford, Illinois. Maybe I got both? Maybe I only saw DRAGON for the first time and sparked my interest? Some times these loose threads are a comfortable reminder of a long life...other times they are my undoing.

Long story sort of medium length, the other book was THE DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS. I'm gonna re-read it and post some thought over the next few weeks.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is it 'Aughts' or 'Oughts' - The Best of the Decade Pt. II

Better late than what quite possibly could have been never. I found the whole task of formulating and compiling this list to be not very enjoyable. Ugh. Not sure why this list proved laborious to produce. Holidays are not a good time for anything except opening gifts... like a 47" LG LCD television. Let's quit with the complaining and finish the list. If you started here you should go back to the beginning . 5 . DIRT - Sean Doolittle (2001) This was a real toss up for me. I could just as easily gone with the funny and brutal THE CLEAN UP. DIRT gets it by a nose because a lot of what I enjoy about Crime Fiction is discovery. THE CLEAN UP is a great book, one that you should read, but I knew it was going to be good going in. Mr. Doolittle is a terrific writer of human frailty. DIRT contains one of the great truisms of human behavior that we frantically keep secrets from our closest friends and family while just as equally hoping these secrets will be discovered and accepted. I ...
4 comments
Read more

The Very Best of Mr. Michael Connelly - Part 2

My August 31 post of The Hungry Detective ranked all the non-Bosch books. This list returns to take on the larger task of Mr. Heironimous Bosch. 9 Dragons made its appearance right before the Indy B'Con, and try as I might... ok I didn't try that hard... I didn't have time to read it for inclusion in these rankings. As a quick aside I don't want to undersell any of the books at the bottom of the list. Mr. Connelly doesn't know how to write a bad book, but in my case there have been occasions where I have not connected with his work. 13. THE NARROWS - 2004 It is because I love THE POET so much that this book is at the end of the list. When Mr. Connelly is at his best his works has the precision of a watchmaker. THE NARROWS just felt forced and not worthy of the intricacy of THE POET. 12. BLACK ICE - 1993 Second book. Third read. I thought the story was pretty flat. It has been well over a decade since I read this book, but the story of Mexican drug runner...
1 comment
Read more

Murder, Mayhem and the Return of Patrick and Angie

Back from Murder and Mayhem in Muskego IV . It was an ultimately very good weekend if not for a few hiccups. The original intention was to attend the mini-con with my sister who lives in Appleton. Alas, she caught one of the fifty or so colds she will have in the next three months. Everyone at The Hungry Detective office hopes she feels better, and we are already looking forward to attending the fifth installment with her next year. The second minor disappointment was the, I'm sure, entirely unavoidable absences of Duane Swierczynski and Harry Hunsicker . Bummer. (Ed Note. Duane's twitter feed notes a Christening... Cheers to that Mr. Swierczynski!) All of this is, of course, is weighted by the very wonderful news that Dennis Lehane , after taking the balance of a year off after finishing The Given Day, is writing a new book. And it is a Kenzie and Gennaro book. Woo-Hoo! In terms of my own education about Crime Fiction, Dennis is an important figure. I was reading a lot by the...
4 comments
Read more